Everyone wants to save money. Presumably that’s why some companies use cheap stock pictures on their web sites. But using such pictures is counter-productive. Cheap stock pictures actually push customers away.
By design, cheap stock pictures target the lowest common denominator. This means the pictures are bland, generic and very simple to understand, just like the pictures in a children’s book.
A 1988 University of Texas study, “Effects of Color and Complexity in Still Photographs on Mental Effort and Memory”, showed that: (i) viewers pay more attention to complex photos; (ii) complex images are processed by the viewer just as easily as simple ones; and (iii) viewers remember complex pictures more than simple pictures.
This means that using cheap stock pictures serves no purpose other than to save money. But spending any money for something that delivers nothing is actually a waste of money.
Marketing is about first getting customer attention and then communicating with the customer in the language of the customer. Stock pictures do none of this.
The most effective way to get attention and communicate with the customer is to hire a professional photographer to produce original pictures. Newspapers and magazines prove this every day.
…it is generally accepted that an item studied as a picture will be better remembered than an item studied as a word. … memory for pictures is remarkable. Indeed in most situations, it would be wise to assume that pictures will be better remembered than words.
– Joyce Oates and Lynne Reder
We all know the saying about a picture being worth a thousand words. But according to a Carnegie Mellon University study (link to pdf) by Joyce Oates and Lynne Reder, “Memory for pictures: Sometimes a picture is not worth a single word”, a picture sometimes does not help memory at all.
When does this happen?
When the picture is generic in nature or has no meaningful label (“label” is not literal). One example given in the study is abstract art which might consist of something like “rectangles” or “blobs”.
Also, visually similar pictures become less memorable with repeated viewing. The study refers to this as “high concept familiarity having a negative effect on picture memory”. My guess is that once a picture becomes a cliché, readers pay less attention to similar photos which are then no longer memorable.
Guess what? Cheap stock pictures are generic in nature and are visual clichés.
Any company that uses cheap stock pictures for its marketing should reconsider. Cheap stock pictures do more harm than good. If a company really wants to communicate with and help its customers then the only option is to have a corporate photographer create original pictures.
Using a professional photographer is always a good investment.
